Bjossi on 29/5/2009 at 17:10
I got some updates (and downgrades...).
My X-Fi seems to be completely dead, not detected by the system at all, and drivers refuse to install. Later tonight I will look into the case to see if the card is simply not properly connected, but if that isn't the case then we may have found the culprit; a dying sound card.
The guy I asked for assistance can't receive the computer until next Tuesday, so until then I'm just gonna use the built-in AC97 audio as a fallback, took around 5 minutes to clean my system of Creative stuff, enable AC97 in BIOS and install drivers. It sounds like shit compared to the X-Fi but it is definitely better than nothing.
bikerdude on 29/5/2009 at 17:17
Quote Posted by Bjossi
I got some updates (and downgrades...).
My X-Fi seems to be completely dead, not detected by the system at all and drivers refuse to install, but if that isn't the case then we may have found the culprit; a dying sound card.
The guy I asked for assistance can't receive the computer until next Tuesday, so until then I'm just gonna use the built-in AC97 audio as a fallback, took around 5 minutes to clean my system of Creative stuff, enable AC97 in BIOS and install drivers. It sounds like shit compared to the X-Fi but it is definitely better than nothing.
try the xfi in another pci slot... The xfi will be covered by warranty if its under a year old.
Bjossi on 29/5/2009 at 17:27
It is over 3 years old, unfortunately. But I think I will leave the dirty work to my friend, he has far more experience with messing around in the case than I do (in fact I don't even know what my sound card looks like, or a PCI slot. Yeah, my eyesight is shoddy).
And if it is the mobo dying but not the X-Fi, then hopefully it will hold on for a few more days.
Bjossi on 7/8/2009 at 01:02
Sorry for the necromancy and double post but I got a new set of annoyances I need help fixing. This time around they aren't quite as serious but still a pain to live with.
By the way, what was wrong with my system before was that the mobo fried. Apparently the cooling fan had died, so the mobo got a good time to cook itself before the failure was discovered. There were cracks in the circuitry and a part of it had melted, how my system could still operate that way I do not understand but that is irrelevant now that I have a new mobo, CPU and RAM; MSI X58 Pro, Intel i7 920 @ 2.67 GHz and 6 GBs of DDR3 RAM (not sure what the speed is though).
Now on to the new problems. When I first booted up my shiny upgraded system after it returned from repairs early in June everything seemed to work good. . . until Windows started loading. First thing I noticed was a strange noise coming from the case, I just allowed it to continue and when Windows finished loading a moment later I expected the Win2k-style login screen to appear after a very short black screen like before, but the black screen lasted far longer than normally, up to 15 seconds (!). And still today these two anomalies are present on every startup.
At first I was worried that these anomalies were a sign of something bad coming my way later but the system seemed to work flawlessly once I reached the login screen, I click Ok and the desktop appears lightning fast as well as all the apps set to launch on startup. But then I tried the DVD drive. . .
It is very "weak". When I put a disk into the drive, it is like the drive struggles to read it. I hear some reading attempts but it never manages to actually read the disk, I just see the pointer flicker between CD-read icon and normal icon, oh and My Computer is inaccessible until I take the disk out of the drive. I called the guy who set up my system and he said the drive worked just fine when he installed drivers and such so this isn't really making any sense whatsoever. Re-plugging the drive as well as reinstalling it did not fix the problem.
When I encountered this I instantly thought of the strange noise during startup, because when the drive tried to read the various disks I put in, it gave away the exact same noise I hear when Windows is booting up (the noise can be heard even if no disk is in the drive).
I have been trying to troubleshoot this for a while; boot logging file access with Process Monitor, boot logging Windows activity with the standard boot log feature, reinstall and re-plug the drive as stated above, etc. nothing of this fixed or revealed any clues. There is one last thing I haven't tried yet and am afraid to do so; uninstall JMicron JMB36X RAID controller. My system is not RAID enabled nor will I be using RAID any time soon, if ever. So what is that driver doing there? I've been doing research and read that JMicron is nothing but garbage from drivers to support, and people report that it causes jerky system in certain cases.
Do you guys think the JMicron stuff might be the root of my system's problems? I'm very willing to uninstall that driver but I have no idea if that will cripple my system or not, as when it comes to hooking up storage devices I'm pretty much clueless. I have no idea if the JMicron controller is being used by any of the storage devices hooked to my system.
Input would be greatly appreciated. If you need more info I will do my best to provide it. :)
EDIT: Found this: (
http://forums.techguy.org/hardware/552708-jmicron-problem.html)
It sounds a lot like what I'm experiencing, malfunctioning DVD drive and possibly read/write speed issue in the case of the short freeze during startup. And surprise; getting rid of all traces of JMicron software made everything work good.
